Monday, January 30, 2012

Around the Horn

The biggest excitement for the team today turned out to not really be that exciting after all. The dead line for paying for your second Regional Event (Duluth for us) was Friday but we got it extended to today. We had a bunch of discussions on whether we wanted to go or not. The pros were: more opportunities for advancing to Nationals, another trip to hang out as a team, and another chance to improve the robot before the U of M. The cons were: it costs a lot of money (for individuals and the team), we probably wouldn't be able to bring everyone, it would leave us in a pretty sad state next year and this off season financially, and there would be more school missed. Ultimately we decided against it. The cons really outweighed the pros. We are trying to build something great in our school and community and we want to keep that going rather than take the selfish route and go to Duluth. The U of M is still really awesome and we are doing everything we can during the build season to make a great robot for it.

As far as actual build advancement today, we got quite a bit done. We finished the prototype of the "horn" on the front of the robot. This will allow us to push down the bridge to go to the other side of field or balance on the bridge at the end of the game. Ryan, Tyler, Brandon, and Bydlon worked hard on designing, machining, and mounting the components. Bryce explains in this YouTube video how the mechanism will work. We can't test it quite yet but the concept and execution looks great.

Bryce worked on re-making the electronics board. Our original idea was to have the board vertical connected to the gatherer. Our plans changed last week when we turned the shooter around. So we needed to re-think the board. Our new idea is to mount the electronics in the middle of the bot right in front of the gatherer. We will have two levels of electronics. Bryce made quite a bit of progress. All we have to do is re-mount the components and build the second level. This will be completed tomorrow.

Ryan re-worked the shooter and gatherer connection so the basketball will not get stuck in between.

Jenna's projects for today included many things. She made a handout about the U of M competition reminding team members we are asking for some monetary contribution to help pay for hotels. She also made some photo collages for new posters (example below). Jenna, Megan, and Colin worked on budgeting out hotels and transportation for the U of M regional. Lots more to do tomorrow.

It was a good day where the team accomplished quite a bit. The sense of accomplishment was back and the energy level was definitely better. Crazy what a day off can do. More excitement tomorrow.